Remember all those articles about how president Obama was pulling ahead of the GOP candidates and had the election all but sewn up? I know they were written long ago (like Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of this week), but many still remember them. Seriously, this theme of Obama's inevitable triumph has returned lately to the main stream media almost to the same extent that it was there a year ago. Then come poll results like those out today. The daily tracking polls for the potential Obama-Romney and Obama/Santorum races were released this morning by Rasmussen. Obama is losing in both; the margin is 5% in Obama/Romney and 1% in Obama/Santorum. Interestingly, the margin for Romney over Obama is above the statistical margin of error in the poll. Also, the daily job approval for Obama released by Rasmussen shows Obama ten points under water. His performance is disapproved by 54% to 44%.
Obviously, these polls do not mean much. They could change tomorrow and they certainly will change many times in the coming months. The significance of the polls, however, is that they put to rest the nonsensical idea that Obama has the election wrapped up. That storyline is just an effort by the media to stoke Obama's chances. It is what they are hoping for, not what is actually happening.
I do wonder, however, if these numbers are just a statistical shift or if something has actually moved the voters. Here are just three items from this week that might have actually changed people's minds:
1) Obama may be getting hurt by the dustup between Limbaugh and Fluke. Clearly, it was a mistake for Obama to step into that dispute by calling Fluke and then pointing out how he did that for his daughters, Sasha and Malia. How can that be, you say? After all, Obama came to the defense of a woman who Limbaugh called a slut. Wasn't Obama just doing what is right? There's the problem. Within a day of Obama joining the fight on the side of Ms. Fluke, it was pointed out that he took a $1 million contribution from Bill Maher who said things much worse than Limbaugh's comments when Maher spoke about Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann. then there were the other progressive "commentators" who had said similarly offensive things about conservative women. When Obama was asked if he would return the contribution from Maher, he refused to answer and changed the subject. The same was the non-answer from the White House spokesman. In short, Obama was shown to be a hypocrite who had gotten into the Fluke/Limbaugh mess just for political reasons. When it came time to live by the words he had just spoken with regard to Limbaugh/Fluke, Obama took a pass. The money from Maher won out over the "principles" announced by Obama. That had to hurt Obama with independents and non-ideological voters.
2) Obama came out with a plan to help lower gasoline costs earlier in the week. In one word, his plan was ALGAE. That's right, Obama wants to lower gas prices by relying on pond scum. He even announced a $14 million program to look into that novel source of fuel. Then Obama denounced a GOP program for drilling for more oil, and Obama also lobbied the Senate to make sure that the Keystone pipeline would not get approved by Congress. Many Americans who are annoyed by the rising gas prices could not miss the silliness of the president's "program".
3) Less than a week ago, Obama announced that he "had Israel's back" in the confrontation with Iran over nuclear weapons. Then, starting the next day we learned that Obama had tried to bribe the Israelis to delay any attack until after the American elections. We also watched Obama roll back the promise he had made about Israel by "explaining" what he had actually meant. It was another of those Obama "explanations" which basically boil down to admitting that he did not mean what he had actually said.
It will be interesting to see what happens to the poll numbers in the days ahead.
No comments:
Post a Comment